Those were the last words Blunt, 33, said to her older sister before being found slain in her Paradise Hills home Sunday evening along with her 3-year-old daughter, Lianna, and 7-month-old son, Richard.

Blunt’s 55-year-old husband, Clarence, also was in the house, injured in what San Diego police investigators are calling a case of triple murder and attempted suicide.

Authorities have not released a cause of the deaths or said when they believe the killings took place. They also have not discussed a possible motive.

But court documents describe Blunt’s attempts to escape a seven-year marriage that had turned violent, as well as efforts by her husband — a convicted murderer — to keep custody of their children.

Nguyen said her sister immigrated from Saigon in 2002. She was working as an accountant at Vien Dong supermarket in Linda Vista when she met Clarence Blunt, a security guard at the store. They dated, then eloped, to her family’s disapproval.

“Clarence was all nice and sweet and attentive before the marriage,” Nguyen said, speaking Vietnamese in an interview with U-T San Diego. “Then afterward, he started being very controlling about what Lilly should do or shouldn’t do. He always had to be right, he was angry when he didn’t get his way.”

She said her sister told her of being tied and gagged by her husband, and learning that he had three other children from two previous relationships.

“I believe Clarence targeted my sister because she was a newcomer to this country who didn’t speak much English and didn’t know the laws of this land,” Nguyen said. “She was helpless.”

On July 30, Blunt sought a restraining order against her husband, claiming he hit her on various occasions, threatened her, drained $105,000 from their bank accounts, and got her fired from her hospital nursing job with false theft allegations. She filed for divorce on Aug. 3.

Blunt left her husband, then returned, several times. She and the children were in a domestic violence shelter until Thursday. Then they moved in with Nguyen.

Nguyen said Blunt’s husband persuaded her to return to their Luther Street home on Saturday to meet with him and some people from his church to try marriage reconciliation.

“I advised her to stop the relationship for good,” said Nguyen. “I told her not to return to her family house again because it was dangerous and volatile with Clarence there. But she said it would be the last time. She thought the group setting made it safe, and she promised me she would come back to my place that night.”

When Blunt failed to return, Nguyen tried to call her. She drove to the house on Sunday and saw Blunt’s car in the driveway. No one answered the doorbell.